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GOLIAN C. VERPLANCK ; 



^is ^utcsti'w, !ptfc, Jiuil (ffhiitattet. 



BY 



CHARLES P. DALY, LL. D. 



GULIAN C. VEEPLANCK 



HIS AITCESTRY, LIFE, AND 
OHAEAOTER. 



DELIVERED BEFORE TUE CEXTURY CLUB, APRIL 9, 1S70, 



BY 



CHAELES P. DALY, LL. D. 




u. s. > 



NEW YORK: 

D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 
90, 92 & 94 GRAND STREET. 

1870. 



JI3 



THE BIOGIJAPIIICAL ADDRESS 



CHIEF- JUSTICE DALY 



To Ml'. Verplaiick must he accorded tlie metropoli- 
tau honor of having been the most distingaiished de- 
scendant of the men who nearly two centuries and a 
half ago founded the city of New York. It may be 
doubted if there be any family now extant in the city, 
with the single exception of the Browers, who can 
trace their connection with its early history as far 
back as the one of which he, by direct chain of lin- 
eal descent, was at the time of his death the gifted 
head. They were, as their name denotes, of that 
old Batavian stock, half Flemish and half Dutch, of 
Brabant and Zealand — a race to which he was not 
merely allied l)y blood, but of which he was a reprc- 



sentatlve type, for lie I'esembled them in his persoual 
appearance, and he had their characteristic abilities and 
virtues; their probity, frugality, and firmness; their 
independence of mind, their tolerant spirit, their ca- 
pacity for public affairs, and their love of letters. 

A book published in Amsterdam, in 1651 ('■^ Be- 
scliryvlnglLe Van Virginia,^'' etc.), contains the eai'liest 
pictorial representation of the little dorp or village 
which has since become the commercial metropolis of 
America. This print represents a fort at the southern 
extremity of the island of New York, close to the 
water's edge, with a few houses sparsely scattered to 
the east and west of it, the roofs of some of which, from 
the inequality of the ground, are alone visible, and tow- 
ering above all, that indispensable and uniformly prom- 
inent object in a Dutch village, a windmill. Before 
the drawing for this print was made, or, to express it 
more definitely, in 1630, four years after the purchase 
of the island from the Indians, when the efltire popula- 
tion, men, women, and children, did not exceed three 
hundred souls, Abraham Isaacson Ver Planck, or, as he 
was sometimes called, Planck, was married to Maria, 
daughter ot Jan Vigne, one of the proprietors of the 
land surrounding " The Collect," or Great Fresh-water 
Pond, Avhich existed up to the early part of the present 
century, on the space now bounded by Bi-oadway, 



Grand, Cliatliam, and Reade Streets, As lie was tlie 
first immigrant and common ancestor, it may not be 
inappropriate upon an occasion like this to put together 
from our early Dutch records Avhat has beeu preserved 
respecting him. In the year of his marriage, a director 
of the Amsterdam Company, named PauA\', obtained a 
patent for a large tract of laud, opposite the little set- 
tlement, upon the western bank of the Hudson, which 
included what is now Jersey City and Hoboken. This 
tract, to which he gave the Latin name of Pavonia, Avas 
granted to him as a Patroon under the imposing title 
of the Lord of Achtienhoven, that he might found 
there a feudal estate or manor of the kind Avhich Van 
Rensselaer about the same period established in the 
land about Albany. Having vainly endeavored for 
several years to accomplish this object, he gave up the 
grant, and Abraham Verplanck was the first to avail 
himself of the opportunity thus oftered to obtaiu, by 
purchase, a considerable portion of this fertile tract at 
or in the vicinity of Jersey City, where he soon estab- 
lished a flourishing farm, and, by selling ofl^ other por- 
tions of it unconditionally to actual settlers for farms 
and tobacco-plantations, he managed to bring aboiit 
what the would-be feudal proj^rietor could not, an 
active and thriving agricultural settlement. In 1641 
he was selected by the inhabitants as one of the coun- 



6 

cil of "Twelve Men," tLe first attempt at any thing 
like representative government in tlie colony, which 
had its origin in the following circumstance : 

In 1G26 a peaceable Indian from Westchester, ac- 
companied by his sou, a young boy, started for the 
Dutch, fort to barter some beaver-skins, and was met 
upon his way, in the vicinity of " the Collect," ■ by 
three of the inhabitants, who robbed him of bis 
peltries, and, to conceal what they had done, murdered 
him. The boy, however, escaped, to remember the deed 
and to avens;e it in the manner of his race. When 
he had arrived at the age of manhood, fifteen years 
afterward, he went to New Amstei'dam, and, entering 
the house of an humble mechanic, struck him dead with 
the blow of an axe. This oj^en and daring act, per- 
petrated under the very walls of the fort, filled tlie 
whole settlement with consternation and alarm. The 
governor demanded the murderer, but his tribe, approv- 
ing of what he had done, refused to give him up, 
upon wdiich the heads of families in Manhattan and its 
vicinity were summoned to the fort, and, upon the gov- 
ernor apprising them of his design to make a general war 
upon the Indians, they selected twelve of their number 
as a representative body to confer with him. The 
" Twelve Men " decided against the war, evasively ad- 
vising the governor to Avait for a fitting opportunity ; 



and, laaviiia' iu tliis wav beeu called into existence as 
representatives, tliey proceeded to recommend a re- 
modelling of tlae government, so as to secure to the in- 
habitants the rights and privileges they had enjoyed 
iu Holland, which resulted in an ordinance of Gov- 
ernor Kief dissolving that body and forbidding any 
future assemblage of the people, as " dangerous and 
tending to the great injury of tlie country and of his 
authority." Very soon afterward Abraham Verplanck 
was arrested " for slandering the authorities and ma- 
liciously tearing down an ordinance posted on the 
gate of the fort," possibly the one dissolving the pop- 
ular body, for which he Avas fined three hundred guil- 
ders. The imposition of this fine,' a very heavy one 
at the tune, appears to have wrought a thorough 
change in his sentiments; for in the following year, 
with two others who had served with him in the 
Council of the Twelve Men, he went to Kief, and, 
falsely professing to represent the wishes of the in- 
habitants, proposed that an attack shoiild be made 
upon the unsuspecting savages, he and his two as- 
sociates offering to guide the soldiers and to assist 
them in making it. The jjroposition was eagerly ac- 
cepted, and led to the perpetration of the dai'kest deed 
that stains the annals of New Netherland. One hun- 
dred and tAventy Indians at Pavouia and Corlear's 



8 

Hook were massacred iu cold blood iu their Avifjwams 
at midnight. Forty were murdered in tlieir beds. In- 
fants, torn from tlieir mothers' breasts, were chopped 
into pieces with axes, and the ft-agments thrown into 
the fire. Neither age nor sex was spared ; and the 
cries of the unhapjiy wretches, borne across the waters 
of the Hudson, Avere heard on the ramparts of the fort 
at New Amsterdam, hj the navigator De Vries, who 
has recorded the incident. 

That Abraham Verplanck was not merely one of the 
instigators, but one of the chief actors in the execution 
of this bloody deed, may be inferred fi'om the fact that, 
when the matter came before the States-General for in- 
vestigation, the committee to whom it was referred 
recommended that two persons should be brought to 
Holland for examination, and Abraham Verplanck 
was one of them. It may very well have been, in view 
of this circumstance, that Mr. Verjilanck never felt any 
desire to write the history of New Netherland, but left 
the task to be discharged long after he had become 
prominent as a literary man, by Dr. O. Callagham and 
Mr. Brodhead. Indeed, with the exception of a slight 
allusion in an oration delivered half a century ago, I 
am not aware that he ever wrote any thing about the 
people of New Netherland or their history. 

The investigation in Holland seems to have been 



9 

abandoued, or at least was productive of no injurious 
consequences to Abraliaui Verplanck, for lie gi-ew in 
favor under the subsequent government of Stuyve- 
sant. In 1649 he was the owner of a plot of ground 
adjoining the fort, upon which he had a house and 
garden, which I suppose to have been the site of the 
present Bowllng-Green, as it was taken, that year to 
be used as an open place for the holding of the weekly 
foirs, or markets, another piece of land being given to 
him in exchange for it, and because there was only 
one oj^eu space or public square within the city walls 
for more than half a century afterward. In 1655 his 
name appears upon the list of those upon whom a 
compulsory tax was imposed for the defences of the 
city, and it may be mentioned as a characteristic, that 
it does not appear upon the list of those who had pre- 
viously made voluntary loans for the building of the 
wall from which Wall Street takes its name. Ten 
years afterward he appears as a witness to a treaty 
which Stuyvesant effected with the Indians for the 
acquisition of lands upon the South Eiver, in Dela- 
ware, of which he became one of the grantees. He 
appears by the records to have been no respecter of 
the ordinances, where the disregard of them was at- 
tended by any advantage in trading, and to have been 
very litigious, involved in lawsuits Avith his mother-iu- 



10 

law aud Lis wife's relations respecting the lands sur- 
rounding "the Collect," and with others. In 1664 he 
was one of the sis^ners of the remonstrance urarina: the 
inexorable Stuyvesant to capitulate to the English ; and 
Ave can imagine the temper with which the indignant 
governor read the passage advising him not "to call 
doAvn the vengeance of Heaven for all the innocent 
l)lood Avhich may be shed by reason of your honor's 
obstinacy." Upon the capitulation of the city, Abra- 
ham Verplanck Avas one of the tAvo hundred and sev- 
enty-two Avho SAVore allegiance to the English, and 
Avith that act his name disappears from our records. 

His son, the first Guliau, Avas the founder of the 
subsequent wealth and prosperity of the family. He 
became a merchant, having his store upon Pearl 
Street, Avhich then faced the water, betAveen Broad 
and Whitehall Streets. He was a sharp-sighted man 
of business, attentive to his own interest, but regarded 
as Avoi"thy of so much trust aud confidence, that he 
Avas one of tlie three persons charged Avith the care 
and settlement of Governor Lovelace's estate. When 
the Dutch repossessed themselves of the city in 1673, 
he Avas one of five selected by the gOA-ernment, out of 
fifteen recommended by a A^ote of the inhabitants, for 
the ofiice of schepen, a position ranking next to that 
of burgomaster; but, Avhile filling the position, he 



11 

was tried for liokling intercourse with the Englisli, a 
grave offence on the part of a magistrate in the eyes 
of liis associates ; wliicli lie defended upon the ground 
that he did so to secure his estate in New Eng- 
land ; which not l:ieing considered satisfactory, a heavy 
fine was imposed upon him of five hundred beaver- 
skins. Upon the restoration of the city to the Eng- 
lish in 1674, an enumeration was made of two himdred 
and seven of the most wealthy of the inhabitants, in 
which his personal estate is put down at five thousand 
florins, being the twenty-eighth in order on the list. A 
few years afterward he united with others in a purchase 
from the Indians of a large tract of land upon the Hud- 
son, which was followed shortly thereafter by the loca- 
tion of Fishkill, of which he was one of the founders — 
the first settlement made in Dutchess County. It was 
by this act chiefly that he laid the foundation of the fu- 
tiire wealth and social influence of the family ; his de- 
scendants having managed, amid the mutations, revolu- 
tions, and changes, that have occurred in our history, 
to retain, to a very great extent, what he had the fore- 
thought to acquii'e. A family homestead, built about 
the commencement of the last century, was Mr. Ver- 
planck's country residence, which, together Avith the 
lands around it, has passed, by his death, to his only 
surviving son, "William S. Verplanck, Esq., the father 
of a numerous family. 



12 

During tlie colonial period, the Veri^lancks, by in- 
termarriage witli the leading English and Dutch fam- 
ilies, the Bayards and the Ludlows, the Van Cortlands 
and the Beekmans, increased in wealth and social im- 
portance. By their marriage with the Van Cortlands 
they acquired the large tract of land jutting out into 
Hudson River which is known as Verplanck's Point. 
In 1730 they intermarried Avith the Crommelins, an 
influential Dutch family, long afterward, and tiutil 
a few years ago, represented in Amsterdam by the 
wealthy banking-house of that name. This family con- 
nection was further cemented by the marriage of Mr. 
Vei'planck's grandfather with an heiress of one of 
principal members of this house, a few years before 
the breaking out of the American Eevolution, and 
this family association with Holland was preserved 
in the middle name of Crommelin, borne alike by 
Mr. Verplanck and by his father. Throughout the 
whole of the colonial period, the family were, to employ 
a term that was then in use, "people of figure;" the 
most distinguished member during that period be- 
ing Philip Verplanck, who, in 1734 and 1768, repre- 
sented the Manor of Cortland in the Colonial Assembly, 
and who, in 1746, was one of the commissioners to con- 
fer with the other colonies iipon the French and Indian 
War. When the difficulty occurred with Great Brit- 



13 

ain, like many of the Dutcli families, their sympathies 
were with the colonists. Samuel Verplanck, Mr. Ver- 
planck's grandfather, was a member of the general com- 
mittee of one hundred, organized in the city of New 
York in 1775, and, as a delegate of the Provisional 
Congress of the colony, he signed the celebrated Dec- 
laration of Association and Union against the jireten- 
sions of Great Britain, one of the prej^aratory steps 
to the Declaration of Independence in the following 
3'ear. But with that his active sympathies ceased, 
and he foiled to fulfil the bold resolution to which 
he had bound himself by his signature, to " carry into 
execution whatever the Continental Congress should 
recommend." No doubt the possibility of the loss, in 
the event of failure, of his landed estate in Dutchess, 
and his possessions iu the city of New York, Avas 
too great a risk for a member of a family that 
had been ever mindful of the preservation of their 
property. He had not the Celtic quality of blood 
which led Charles Carroll, in affixing his name to 
thj Declaration of Independence, to imperil a vast 
estate ui^on the issue, and, that there might be no 
mistake,**to add to his signature, " of Carrollton." 
In December of 1776, Thomas Paine uttered the 
memoi'able words, " These are the times that try men's 
souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot 



14 

will, iu this crisis, shrink from the sacred cause of his 
country ; " and Samuel Verplanck Avas one of the men 
to whom these words applied. He was not willing to 
risk family distinction or property upon the issue of a 
cause, though he believed it to be right, and although 
he had declared, under his own signature, that the salva- 
tion of the rights and liberties of America " depended 
upon a firm union of its inhabitants, in the vigorous 
prosecution of the measures necessary to oppose the 
ai'bitraiy and oppressive acts of Great Britain." 
He took no further part iu aid of the colonists, 
but carefully avoided doing any thing to incur their 
ill-will. His mansion and grounds at Fishkill be- 
came the headquarters of Baron Steuben during the 
period that the American Army were encamped in the 
vicinity, and iu a large room in this mansion the meet- 
ing was held at which the Society of the Cincinnati 
was formed. Its owner appears to have acted with so 
much discretion, and to have given so little offence, 
that he escaped from being named in the act of for- 
feiture of 1779, and when the war closed he quietly 
repossessed himself of his property. As he was a 
rich man, and his Dutch wife was a ^vomanrof great 
intelligence and cultivation, he became one of the 
social magnates of the city of New York ; occupying 
a large double mansion iu Wall Street, upon the site 



15 

of wliat was afterward the United States Assaj' build- 
ing, where, and upon his patrimonial estate at Fishkill, 
he kept up the old Dutch hospitality. He died at the 
homestead at Fishkill, in 1819, at the age of ninety-one. 
Having said thus much respecting the fiimily, I 
cannot pass, at least without a brief notice, Gulian 
Verplanck, Mr. Verplanck's graud-uncle, after whom he 
was named, and who was in his time a very prominent 
man. He was for many years one of the leading mer- 
chants of the city, carrying on aii extensive trade with 
Holland, where he had been sent in early life for his 
education. Like his grand-nephew, he was a man of 
literary tastes. Mr. Kelby, of the Historical Society, 
called my attention to a paragraph in the Columbian 
of February 23, 1817, which I will read, as the verses 
are quite respectable, containing Avhat the writer 
felt to be a political prophecy. 

" The following lines were transcribed from a pane 
of glass at an inn, in England : 

" Hail, happy Britain, Freedom's blest retreat, 
Great is tliy power ; thy wealth, thy glory, great : 
But wealth and power have no immortal day, 
For all things only ripen to decay ; 
And when that time arrives, the lot of all, 
When Britain's glory, wealth, and power, must fall, 



16 

Then shall thy sons, fcjr such is Iloavevi's decree, 
In other worlds, another Britain see — 
And what thou art, America shall be. 

" (Signed) GuLiAN Verplanck. 

His anticipations of the future glory of America, 
however, liad little effect upon his loyalty when the 
struggle with the mother countiy arose, and he 
remained in New York during the long period of 
tlie British occupation, a steadfast adherent to the 
crown. When the Duke of Clarence, then a young 
midshipman, afterward William IV., was in New York, 
Gulian Verplanck was his associate, skated with him 
upon the Collect, and rescued him from drowning 
M'hen he fell through a hole in the ice. He was, how- 
ever, a man of so much character and capacity, that 
his Tory antecedents in no way operated to his 
pi'ejudice, for he was more influential and prominent 
after the Revolution than before. He represented 
the city of New York in the House of Assembly 
in 1788-89, and again in 1796-97, and upon both 
occasions was elected Speakei", a position at that 
time of great dignity and influence. In 1790 he be- 
came the President of the Bank of New York, then 
the only bank in the city, and continued to be its 
President until his death in 1799. He was the father 



17 

of Jolinsou Yerplanclc, for many years a proiiuiient 
editor iu New York, au active Federal politician, aud 
a literary man. 

Daniel C. Verplanck, Mr. Verplanck's fatliei-, mar- 
ried in early life Elizabetli Johnson, tke daughter of 
the third and the grand-daughter of the fii'st President 
of Columhia College, of which union Mr. Verplanck was 
the only child. His father afterward married Ann Wal- 
ton, the daughter of William Walton, the proprietor, 
during the Revolution, of the old mansion, still stand- 
ing in Pearl Street, known as the Walton House ; by 
Avhich marrlasre he had two daughters and three sons.' 
After his second marriage he lived exclusively in Dutch- 
ess County, which he represented for six years in Con- 
gress, from 1803 to 1809, and later iu life he was one 
of the County Judges. He died In Fishklll, iu 1846, 
at the age of eighty-eight. 

Mr. Verplanck was born at his grandfather's house, 
iu Wall Street, in 1786. He lost his mother at a very 
early age, and after his father's second marriage he was 
brought up exclusively by his grandmother, and passed 
most of his childhood in the house in which he was born 
and that of his grand-uncle Gulian, who lived a few 
doors below it, iu Wall Street ; or In occasional visits 

' Mary Ann Verplanck, Samuel Verplanck, Elizabetli Verplanck, Wil- 
liam Walton Verplanck, and James Delaiicey Verplanck. 
3 



18 

to his luotlier's relations, tlie JoLusons, at Stratford, 
iu Connecticut. Mrs. Henry Pierrepont remembered 
to Lave been present at a dinner-paity at liis grand- 
uncle's when young Gulian, then a very small boy, was 
broiight in and placed upon the table, to repeat, for 
the entertainment of the company, a sj^eech from one 
of the dramatists. The taste for the drama, thus early 
implanted, he retained through lifa The theatre was 
ahvays one of his greatest enjoyments, and his I'ecoUec- 
tions of the great actors he had seen in this country and 
Europe, his vivid remembrance and delicate discrim- 
ination of their distinctive qualities, and the many in- 
teresting anecdotes he had to tell respecting them, was 
one of the charming features iu his table-talk. 

At his grandmother's house, and more especially 
at that of his graud-uncle, he had the opportunity of 
seeing all that was cultivated and refined of the society 
of New York at that period, and in his old age he fre- 
quently spoke of the happy hours he had spent in 
Gulian Verplanck's hospitable mansion, especially dur- 
ing the jDeriod when he was passing through college, 
and of the many distinguished persons he had seen 
there. 

He graduated at Columbia College in 1801, at the 
early age of fifteen. Ha^■iug outlived nearly all his 
contemporaries, I have met with no one who could 



10 

comuumicate :xiiy particulars of Lis college-life ; but it 
may be taken for granted tbat lie was an apt student, 
and diligently earned Lis degree. After leaving col- 
lege Le studied law in tlie office of tlie celebrated Ed- 
ward Livingston, and was admitted to tlie bar by 
CLancellor (tlien CLief- Justice) Kent, in 1807, at tLe 
age of twenty-one. 

In tLe following year Le Lad an office as an attor- 
ney-at-law, at 51 Wall Street, and kept one for some 
years tliereafter in Pine Street, but I appreliend did no 
business, as Le was never known to Lave tried or ar- 
gued a cause in court except a case of Lis own, AvLicL 
will be Lereafter referred to. 

In 1809 Le may he said to Lave made Lis entrance 
into public life by tlie delivery of an oration upon tlie 
4tL of July, in tLe old NortL DutcL CLurcli in Wil- 
liam Street, before tLe Wasliington Benevolent So- 
ciety. He Avas at tLe time a Federalist, tLe party 
to wLicli Lis family belonged, and accordingly we 
find tLe young orator in tLis oration denouncing 
" tLe bold imposture and many-colored lies by wLicli 
tLe friends of WasLington were driven from public 
confidence." He portrayed iu glowing rlietoric tLe 
disastrous effects of Jefferson's Administration, de- 
scribed tLe country during tLat period as "sunk iu 
letLargy ; its people drugged witL flattery ; its navy 



20 

dismantled ; its commerce a prey to every jietty 
jiu'ate ; its judiciary trampled under feet, witli corrup- 
tion sprouting from the head of the Administration 
and spreading through every department of the state, 
until the nation was brought to the very verge of ruin." 
Nor did the newly-elected President, Madison, fare 
much better. He was referred to as " the supporter of 
the calumniators of Washington, the patron of the 
admirers of French licentiousness who was content to 
submit in silence to the plans of men which had 
nearly brought the nation to the feet of Napoleon." 
All this was highly acceptable to the body before 
whom it was delivered. They printed the address, and 
with them, and with all Avho entertained the same sen- 
timents, he acquired considerable reputation, and was 
marked as a rising man. 

But lie had been two years a student-at-law in the 
office of Edward Livingston, the talented leader of the 
Democratic party, and had the opportunity of learning 
somethino- of the real views and sentiments of the 
other side. This association had doubtless opened his 
eyes to the fact that the general distrust of the people 
entertained by Hamilton and most of the leading 
Federalists was not destined to promote the success or 
secure the permanency of that party ; and he was con- 
seij^uently carefid to incorporate in his oration the sen- 



21 

timeut tliat " to the people of this Liinl experience has 
shown thiit the protection of their rights may be safely 
confided," indicating that he was then drifting toward 
the Democratic party, a result which an event that 
occurred two years afterward materially contrilnited 
to brins: about. 

In 1811 one of the 2;raduatin2' class of Columbia 
College, afterward well known as Dr. J. B. Stevenson, 
who had been appointed one of the disputants in a 
political debate which was to take place at the college 
commencement, submitted, as required, what he was to 
say, to the inspection of one of the faculty. Dr. Wilson. 
It contained this passage ; " Representatives ought to 
act according to the sentiments of their constituents," 
which Dr. Wilson required him to modify by limiting 
it to one instance only. The young man remonstrated, 
but the doctor was inexoral^le, because, as he afterward 
testified, he considered it expedient that the young 
man should deliver correct principles, as he was to be 
the respondent in the debate. The commencement was 
held in Trinity Church before a crowded audience, and, 
when Stevenson came to reply, he omitted the qualifi- 
cation and delivered the passage exactly as he had 
written it. When his name was called for the de- 
livery of a diploma, he ascended the stage, and, as the 
president was in the act of handing him the one 



22 

prepared for liiiii, one of tlie j)rofessors interposed, and 
tlie president refused to confer tlie degree. Tlie young 
man Avithdrew, overwhelmed by this public exposure, 
but upon returning to the body of the church he Avas 
surrounded by his fellow-graduates and friends, for he 
had been an industrious and most exemplary student, 
and at their instigation here turned to the platform and 
demanded his diploma. One of the professors, anxious 
to accommodate matters, said to him, " Probably you 
forgot," but the young man promptly answered, " I did 
not, but I would not utter what I did not believe," 
The diploma was again refused, upon which he had 
the courage to turn to the audience and say : " I am 
refused my degree, ladies and gentlemen, not from any 
literary deficiency, but because I refused to speak the 
sentiments of others as my own." This at once pro- 
duced a sensation, upon which Hugh Maxwell, an 
alumnus of the college and after\vard a distino-uished 
advocate, went upon the stage and addressed the 
audience in support of Stevenson, condemning the 
faculty in what they considered veiy bold and offensive 
language. At this juncture Mr. Vei"planck also went 
upon the platform and demanded of Dv. Mason, the 
provost, who w^as the ruling power in the college, why 
the de2:ree was not conferred. Dr. Mason informed 
him, and Verj)lanck answered : " The reason, sir, is not 



23 

satisfactory; Mr. Maxwell must be sustained." Tlie 
audience now became greatly excited in favor of Steven- 
son, and Yerplanck, turning toward tbem, moved a 
vote of thanks to Mr. Maxwell "for bis zealous and 
bonoi'able defence of an injured man," a proposition 
wbicb tbe graduating class received witb tbree cbeers, 
followed by tbree groans for tbe provost. Yerplanck's 
manner in tbis scene, as subsequently described by Dr. 
Mason, " was loud and rude, ■\vitb an au* of consequence 
and disdain, calculated to aid and increase tbe disturb- 
ance," and, according to tbe doctor's account, be " ap- 
jjeared as if erecting bimself into a tribunal to judge 
above tbe beads of tbe faculty," a statement in wbicb 
otbers wbo -were present did not concur. Old as well as 
young men now took as active a part as Veiplanck or 
Maxwell ; and wben Dr. Mason, in bis official cbaracter 
as provost, came forward to restore order, be Avas, to 
employ bis own words wben examined as a witness, 
received witb a "biss tbat in manner and quality 
would not disgrace a congregation of snakes upon 
Snake Hill in New Jersey." He was compelled to re- 
tire, tbe police were brougbt in, and tbe commence- 
ment came to an end in confusion and disorder. 

From tbe college and tbe cbureb tbe affair passed 
into tbe newspapers. Tbe faculty published in tbe 
daily journals a lengtby vindication of tbeir course. 



24 

and were answered Ly a rejoinder from the graduating 
class, and by reY)lies from others wlio were present. A 
complaint was made to the grand jury, and seven of 
tlie principal actors, Stevenson, Verplanck, and Max- 
well being included, were indicted, and at the August 
term of the Court of Sessions, or, as it was then pop- 
ularly called, the Mayor's Court, they wei'e arraigned 
and put upon their trial for the criminal offence of 
creating or assisting in a riot. De Witt Clinton, being 
then mayor of the city, presided ; and from the unusual 
circumstance of such an occurrence in a church upon 
such an occasion, and the foct that all who were 
indicted were members of leading families of the 
city, the trial excited the deepest interest. Verplanck 
and Maxwell defended themselves, and three of the 
most eminent counsel of that day, David B. Ogden, 
Josiah O. Hoffinan, and Peter A. Ja}^, aj^peared for the 
other defendants. The principal members of the fac- 
ulty were examined as witnesses, conspicuous among 
whom was Dr. Mason, the provost of the college, in 
the earnestness and zeal which he displayed to secure 
a conviction. He was at the time the most eloquent 
preacher in the city, or indeed in the country, and in 
giving his testimony brought all the weight of his pop- 
ularity and his intellectual gifts to bear with great 
effect against the accused. 



Vei'planck addressed the jury upon liis own liehalf. 
He declared, wliicli was no doubt the truth, that he 
was moved to do what he did solely from his sense of 
the injustice of the college authorities, in publicly re- 
fusing to confer the degree becaiise the young man 
would not utter their political sentiments. " There 
was," he said, "gentlemen of the jury, a lofty spirit of 
gallantly about the conduct of Mr. MaxAvell ^vith which 
at the time I could not but sympathize, and which now 
I cannot but admire. He was bold in the cause of 
friendship and of character. I approved of his behav- 
ior, and I am proud that I did so ; " and then gratified 
his own feelings at least by telling the jury that Dr. 
Mason was " a man towering in the proud consciousness 
of intellectual strength, little accustomed to peld, or 
even to listen to the opinion of others, that he appeared 
as a witness jiouring forth iij^on him and Maxwell all 
the bitterness of his rancor and the overboilinc; of his 
contempt ; throwing ofl:' the priest and the gentleman 
and assuming the buffoon ; showering tijion them his 
delicate irony, his choice simile of the congregation of 
snakes, and all the other savory flowers of rhetoric, in 
which he was so fertile, and had poured forth in such 
abundance," and, appealing to the juiy, asked, "What 
credit will you give to a witness, inflamed by passion, 
smarting with wounded pride, and mortified self con- 
fidence ? " 



26 

It "was very doubtful wlietlier the offence, -wlncli 
tlie law denominates a riot, liad been proved, or in 
fact committed, wlietlier tbere was any tiling more than 
a strong expression of disapprobation on tlie part cf 
the audience, an occurrence more or less incident to the 
nature of jjublic assemblages, which became a scene 
of disorder from the faculty persisting in refusing to 
give the young man his diploma. No actual violence 
on the part of any of tlie defendants was proved, nor 
was wliat occurred of a nature to ci'eate j^uljlic terror, 
a necessary ingredient in the crime of riot. There 
was probably nothing more than a l)reacli of the 
j^eace. 

It was pertinently suggested by Mr, Jay that if 
the college permitted the students to discuss a polit- 
ical question, as a part of the public exercises at a 
commencement, they should have been allowed the 
free exercise of their own views in the discussion of it, 
and that the supervision of their remarks should have 
been confined to the correction merely of literary de- 
fects; that otherwise there Avas no freedom in the 
debate, but the students were simply mouth-pieces to 
utter the political views and sentiments of the pro- 
fessors ; that there was nothing in the statutes of the 
college wliicli imposed the penalty of a refusal of a 
degree if a student Avould not incorporate in his speech 



what a professor directed him to put in ; that a reso- 
lution had been inserted in the minutes of 1790, sub- 
jecting the compositions of the students to the inspec- 
tion of the faculty, and, if any such penalty as the 
deprivation of a degree "were attached, the students 
were left in i2;noi'ance of it, as there was nothui2: of 
the Ivind in the college statutes ; and he argued that it 
was not the young men upon trial, but the faculty, 
who Avere responsible for the disturbance ; that they 
had, perhaps, without sufficient reflection, fallen into 
an error, which their pride prevented them afterward 
from admitting. They had committed a palpable act 
of injustice, and it was theii* unwillingness to recede 
from it, and their determination to persist in it, that 
had exasperated the audience. They consequently 
were the real authors of the I'iot, if there was one, 
but he insisted, as did the other counsel for the de- 
fence, that, in the sense of the law, there had been no 
riot. 

Clinton, however, had no misgivings in resjject to 
the law. He charged the jury that the offence had 
been committed, that all the defendants were guilty 
of it, and got rid of the definition of a riot by Haw- 
kins, a learned elementary avithority upon the criminal 
law, by declaring it to be " undoubtedly bad." He 
commented upon the conduct of the defendants with 



28 

great severity, and was .especiallj' severe upon Ver- 
])lanck. It Avas difficult, he said, to speak of his con- 
duct iu terms sufficiently strong ; that he was one of 
the principal ringleaders " in the scene of disorder and 
disgrace," and that in his reply to the provost, and 
in his moving a vote of ttanks to Maxwell, he evinced 
" a matchless insolence." He told tlie jury that tliey 
were bound, " Ijy every consideration arising out of \he 
public peace and the puldic nioi'als, and by their re- 
gard for an institution venerable for its antiquity, to 
bring in all the defendants guilty ; " that he had no 
hesitation in declarina; that the disturbance was "the 
most disgraceful, the most unprecedented, the most 
unjustifiable, and the most outrageous, that had ever 
come to the knowledge of the court." 

Under this charge the juiy found the defendants 
guilty. Verplanck and Maxwell were fined two hundred 
dollars each, which was imposed, says Renwick, Clin- 
ton's biographer, in an address conveying a severe, mer- 
ited, and pointed reprimand. They were required, in 
addition, to procure sureties for their future good be- 
havior; and the same authority states that Clinton 
hesitated for some time whether he was not called 
upon, by a regard for justice, to inflict also the dis- 
grace of imprisonment. 

But the result of the prosecution did not produce 



29 

the effect wliieli its promoters anticipate.!. Public 
feeling, especially in the Democratic party, was with 
the defendants, and the course of Clinton, uj^on the 
trial, greatly augmented the hostility of the Madiso- 
nian Democrats to him. We were then on the eve of a 
war with England. The measures of Madison had not 
been sufficiently enei'getic to satisfy the more ardent 
of the Democrats; and Clinton, relying upon a diver- 
sion of the dissatisfied portion of that party in his fa 
vor, had taken the field as a candidate for the presi- 
dency against Madison, and at this very time Avas in- 
triguing to secure the support of the Federalists. By 
the Democrats his course i;pon the trial was at- 
tributed to a desire to ino;ratiate himself with the Fed 
eral pai-ty, and matters subsequently brought to light 
disclose that this belief was not wholly without foun- 
dation. Dr. Mason, a Federalist of the straitest 
sect, either shortly before, or about the time of the 
trial, had acted as the private friend of Clinton in 
brino-ins:: about an interview between him and John 
Jay, Kufus King, and Gouverneur Morris, three of the 
principal Federal leaders, which failed of its object 
through John Jay's disgust at hearing Clinton say that 
he had never sympathized with the Democrats, but had 
always been in favor of the policy of Washington and 
Adams's Administration — an extraordinary statement 



30 

fi'om the man whose denuuciatiou of tlie Federal lead- 
ers, as " men wLo would rather reign in hell than serve 
in heaven," had rung through every part of the Union. 
It was therefore not without some ground that he was 
exposed to the suspicion of having been actuated upon 
this trial hj a desire to do something that would gratify 
the Federalists, and esjiecially his negotiator with them, 
a man of imperious temper and despotic will, who had 
set his heart upon the success of this prosecution. 

Two months after this trial Mr. Verplanck was mar- 
ried to Miss Eliza Fenno, by whom he had two chil- 
dren, William L. and Gulian Verplanck, Jr. The lady 
died in Paris, in 1S17. The younger son, Gulian, 
in 1845. 

During this year, 1811, he made his first venture 
in authorship, in an anonymous pamphlet in the form 
of a letter, addressed to the learned Dr. Samuel L. 
Mitchell, purporting to come from Abimelech Goody, 
ladies' shoemaker, 289 Division Street, beseeching the 
learned doctor, who was then a United States Senator, 
to advise him how he should invest ten thousand dol- 
lars which he had drawn in a lottery, and detailing his 
ill success in attemjiting to use it in banks, in manu- 
facturing companies, and in discounting commercial 
paper. This production was rather playful than witty, 
but it attracted attention at the time from the nature 



31 

of tlie subject, aucl because it was a pioneer of a kind 
of writing in wliicli Artemus ^Yarcl and otlier humor- 
ists liave been so successful, wliere mucli of tlie effect 
is produced by the Avay in which the words are spelled 
and ill the clever imitation of the style of an illiterate 
person. 

Having entered the literary arena under the so- 
briquet of Abimeleeh Coody, he used this nonide plums 
afterward in pamphlets aud in political ai-ticles iu the 
newspapers during the years 1814 and 1815. One 
was a vigorous appeal to the Federalists to come out 
manfully iu support of the war. In another, "A Fa- 
ble for Statesmen aud Politicians," the struQ^o-le for 
the presidency was depicted as a strife among the va- 
rious animals for supremacy, in which Clinton figures 
as a " young Irish greyhound of high mettle and ex- 
travagant pretensions." 

In 1812 and 1813 Clinton cooperated with the 
Federalists, first in his effort for the presidency and 
afterward in an attemj^t to defeat Governor Tompkins; 
and Verplanck, though an a^'owed Federalist, exerted 
himself against Clinton, whom he regarded as playing 
a double part, by secretly acting with the Federalists, 
who opposed the war, and outwardly with that portion 
of the Democratic party who regarded ]\Iadison's meas- 
ures as not sufficiently energetic. 



32 

In the 8priiig of 1814 he took a more decided 
course in the formation of a small party of Federalists 
opposed to Clinton and in favor of the war, who ran 
a sejiarate ticket for members of Assembly from the 
city of New York, Mr. Verplanck being one of the nomi- 
nees. The pretension of this organization to repre- 
sent the Federalists was unsparingly ridiculed by Cole- 
man, the editor of tlie livening Post, who l)estowed 
upon them the sobriquet of "the Coodies," and the 
ridicule finding support in the very small vote which 
they polled at the election, the organization was aban- 
doned. But, though small in numbers, they were for- 
midable in talent, and kept up the war against Clinton 
1)y clever and witty articles in the newspapers, which 
he appears to have felt much more keenly than the 
organized efforts of the politicians. 

In 1815 Clinton was I'emoved from the office of 
Mayor of New York. He had become alienated from 
the Democratic party, without acquiring the confidence 
of the Federalists; and, with his political prospects 
blasted, he found himself with a large family, deprived 
of a lucrative office, and heavily in debt. This painful 
position was augmented by the fact that his life had 
been passed wholly in politics and that he had never 
followed any business or jirofession. At this moment, 
when many would have sunk in despondency, this 



33 

remarkable man determined to devote liis eneregy 
to a work witli Avliicli Lis name will be forever 
associated — the constniction of the Erie Canal; 
and, anticipating political opposition both to it and 
to himself, he resolved to attack Avith their own 
weapons those vrho by their writings had assisted in 
producing his downfiill. Accordingly, in 1815, a 
pamphlet appeared entitled " An Account of Abime- 
lech Coody and other celebrated writers of New York, 
in a letter from a traveller to his friend in South 
Carolina." Under a show of apparent fairness, it was 
designed to demolish the political and literary influence 
" of the Coodies," whom he described as of " a hybrid 
nature, the combined spawn of Federalism and Jacobin- 
ism, generated in the venomous passions of disappoint- 
ment and revenge." Washington Irving, Paulding, and 
many others, came in for severe castigation, but he 
especially devoted himself to Verplanck (Abimelech 
Coody). He reviewed all his literary performances, 
charged him with avarice, and, what was apparently a 
high offence in Clinton's eyes, of writing in the magazines 
for money. He detailed the particulars of Verplanck's 
trial and conviction as a rioter in Trinity Chiirch, giving 
extracts from the severest portions of his own charge ; 
and, after admitting that Verplanck had more knowledge 
than his brother wits, and was polite in his manner, he 



34 

proceeded, iu an imag'maiy interview, to give this uot 
verj^ complimentary account of liis personal appearance • 
" When I saw Abimelech Coody, he arose from his 
chair as I was announced and did not approach me in 
a direct line, but iu a sidelong way, or diagonally, a 
kind of eclielon movement, reminding one of Lin- 
ufeus's character of a dog, who, he says, always inclines 
his tail to the left. This I attributed at first to diiS- 
dence, but I no sooner had a full view of him, than 
I instantly sa-w 

' the proud patrician sneer, 
The conscious simper, and tlie jealous leer.' 

" His person is squat and clumsy, reminding one of 
Humpty Dumpty on the wall. A nervous tremor is 
concentrated at the end of each nostril, from his hahit- 
ual sneering and cai'ping, with a look as wise as that of 
Solomon, at the dividing of the child, upon an old piece 
of tapestry." And, after having disposed of Verplanck, 
he proceeded, under the shelter of an anonymous name, 
to give the following very flattering account of him- 
self: "Mr. Clinton, among his other great qualifica- 
tions, is distinguished for his marked devotion to sci- 
ence ; few men have read more and few men can claim 
more varied and extensive knowledge, and the bounties 
of Nature have been improved by persevering and unre- 
mitting industry." It would scarcely be credited that 



a man should Avrite iu this way respecting himself, and 
the existence of this passage might justify a doubt of 
his being the author of the pamphlet, were it not that 
the original manuscript, in his handwriting, which 
was preserved by the printer, is in existence. 

It would have been better had he left Abimelech 
Coody alone; for, though Clinton, as a writer, had a 
great deal of force, and was something of a master of 
invective, he had not Verplanck's learning, his critical 
acuteness, nor his wit — qualities of which the latte.i 
made ample use when the proper time arrived. 

It would ajjpear from Clinton's statement that Mi". 
Verplanck held some military position during the war, 
for he enumerates, among his other acts, that he settled 
down into a captain of sea-fencibles for money. He 
was, however, what Clinton was not, an earnest and 
oonsistent supporter of the war from the beginning, 
alienating himself in this respect from his fiimily and 
from all his previous associations. 

In 1813 Washington Irvino; undertook the editorial 
charge of a periodical known as the Analectio Maga- 
zine, in which he was aided by the contributions of 
two of his literary friends, Verplauck and Paulding. 
Mr. Verj^lanck's contributions, which will be found 
imder the signature of V., consisted chiefly of biograph- 
ical sketches of such leadinir Americans as Samuel 



36 

Adams, Fislier Ames, Oliver Ellswortli, ami otliers. 
These papers, thougli exceedingly well writteu, were, 
as biographical sketches, wanting in a due apprecia- 
tion of some of the characters delineated. He did not, 
for instance, give Samuel Adams the position he de- 
served as one of the master-spirits of the American 
Revolution, for the reason, probably, that the facts 
which show it had not then come to light. 

At the close of 1816 he went to Europe, and was 
absent two years. He was joyfully welcomed, upon 
his arrival in London, by his friend Washington Irving. 
" The sight of him," writes Irving to Mrs. Hoifman, 
'' brought a thousand melancholy recollections of past 
times and scenes ; of friends that are distant, and others 
that are gone to a better world ; " and the two friends 
passed much of their time together. While he was 
in London he was a frequent attendant in the Coui't of 
King's Bench, then presided over by the celebrated Lord 
Ellenborouo-h. Of EUenborouajh, and of what occurred 
in the law coui'ts, he had many pleasant anecdotes. 
As a ludicrous illustration of the weight which this 
eminent jurist gave to the want of collegiate educa- 
tion in a professional man, Mr. Verplauck had this 
anecdote : that he was present in court in an action 
brought by a surgeon for the recovery of his bill, 
which the person who emj^loyed him resisted, as an 



uureasouable charge. These were not the cU^ys of Sir 
Astley Cooper, or of Dr. Mott, and Lord. Elleuborough, 
who probably looked upon the calling of a surgeon as 
but slightly removed from that of a barber, was de- 
scribed by Mr. Verplanck as closing his chai'ge to the 
jurj^, in his deep-toned voice and with all his impres- 
siveness of manner, in these words : " I submit to j'ou, 
gentlemen of the jmy, whether this is not an enor- 
mous charge on the jiart of a man wliose education has 
been illiljeral, and whose art is mechanical." 

He was fortunate, in 1816, in seeing Mrs. Siddons 
iu her two greatest characters. Queen Katherine and 
Lady Macbeth, upon the only two occasions after her 
retirement, when she consented to reappear, first for 
the benefit of her brother, and afterward at the special 
recpiest of the royal family. He sjioke of her per- 
formance, upon both occasions, as transcending any 
thing he had ever witnessed, expressing this opinion 
after he had seen Rachel and Ristori in their finest 
personations. He was also present in 1817 when her 
brother, John P. Kemble, took his farewell of the stage, 
in the character of Coriolanus. He described Kemble 
as a careful, studied, and classical actor, who was veiy 
fine in Roman characters, but not equal to Cooke or to 
Kean in some of the master-creations of Shakespeare, 
such as Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Shylock, and Richard 



38 

tlie Tliiid. He saw Kemble iu Hamlet, whicli was 
considered the most perfect of liis performances, and 
paid Mr. Edwin Bootli the compliment of saj-ing that 
his personation of Hamlet was superior to that of 
Kemble, Cooke, or Kean. After leaving England he 
made the usual tour of the Continent, and passed much 
of his time in Paris, a close observer of the effects 
produced by the reactionary movement that followed 
upon the downfall of Napoleon. He especially enjoyed, 
while in Paris, the acting of Talma, Mdlle. Mars, aud 
Mdlle. George, for he was an excellent French scholar, 
and as thoroughly acquainted with the dramatic litera- 
ture of France as he was with that of England. 

Upon his return to this city, in 1818, he delivered an 
anniversary discourse before the New York Historical 
Society. It is among the most finished of his produc- 
tions, and greatly augmented his literary reputation. 
Among other things in this admirable discourse, he suc- 
cessfully vindicated the benevolent Las Casas from the 
charge of Robertson, and other historians, of having 
been the one to suggest the importation of negroes from 
Africa for slaves, as a means of dispensing with the en- 
slavement of the Indians, a statement until then univer- 
sally credited. He reviewed the leading events con- 
nected with the colonization of New England, the Mid 
die States, and some of the Southern States, interweav- 



39 

ing his observations with some finely-sketclied portraits, 
especially of Oglethorpe and Bisliop Berkeley, calling 
attention for the first time in tlais countiy to Berkeley's 
well-known poem, containing tlie prophetic line, "West- 
ward the course of empire takes its way." In adverting 
to the founding of this city by the Dutch, he vindi- 
cated the Hollanders from the aspersions of English 
writers, and referred to his friend L-ving's " Knicker- 
bocker," in these words : 

" It is more in sorrow than in ano;er that I feel mv- 
self compelled to add to these gross instances of na- 
tional injustice, a recent work of a writer of our own, 
Avho is justly considered one of the brightest orna- 
ments of American literature. I allude to the bur- 
lesque history of New York, in which it is painful to 
see a mind as admirable for its exquisite perception of 
the beautiful, as it is for its quick sense of the ridicu- 
lous, wasting the riches of its fancy on an ungrateful 
theme, and its exuberant humor in a coarse caricature." 
Irving, writing home to his brother, says : " I have seen 
what Verplanck said of my work. He did me more 
than justice in what he said of my mental qualifications, 
and he said nothing of my work that I have not long 
thought of it myself. He is one of the houestest of 

men I know of in speaking his opinion His own 

talents and acqiiirements are too great to suffer him to 



40 

entertain jealousy ; Init, were I his bitterest enemj', 
sueli an opinion have I of his integrity of mind, that 
I would refer any one to him, for an honest account of 
me, sooner than to any one else." 

Upon Verplanck's return, Clinton, through his la- 
bors as one of the commission of inquiry, and his 
earnest advocacy of the Erie Canal, had been restored 
to popular favor and was Governor of the State ; but 
there was still a strong party against him, upon whom 
Clinton conferred the sobriquet^ by which they were 
long afterward known, of " The Bucktails," and with 
that party Mr. Verplanck allied himself. 

The fruit of this political connection was the ap- 
pearance in the following year, 1819, of a production 
which was then extensively read in the city and in the 
State, upon Avhich the newspapers bestowed the popu- 
lar name Avhich it afterward bore, of " The Bucktail 
Bards." It was a poetical satire U2)on Clinton, of great 
merit not only in the epigrammatic point of the verse, 
but in the wit and learning displayed in the notes with 
"which it was profusely garnished. It first appeared in 
the form of a brief poetical epistle, entitled " Dick Shift," 
which was after\vard, during the same year, augmented 
in quantity and published with another poetical effu- 
sion assuming to come from one Major Pindar Puflf, a 
friend of Clinton's, and some smaller poems, the whole 



41 

being embraced uudei- the general title of "The State 
Triumvirate," to which a ludicrously learned and witty 
introduction was added, and an increased quantity of 
notes. My limits will admit only of the observation 
that the description of the hero, Dick Shift, an un- 
principled politician and applicant for office ; the por- 
trait of the learned Dr. Samuel L. Mitchell ; the inter- 
view with Clinton ; and the meeting of the council, in 
which Dick's application for office is passed upon, Avill 
bear comparison with anything in Hudibras or Swift: 
while the imitation of the Irish orator, Charles Phillips ; 
the French congratulatory poem; the ludicrous epi- 
gram disguised in Greek letters, purporting to come 
from Dr. Parr ; the philological dissertation upon the 
derivation and meaning of the word Bucktail ; and 
the learned letter of Dr. Mitchell in the notes, explain- 
ino- scientifically the kind of vermin that troubled the 
sapient Mr. Pell, the secretary and political ally of 
Clinton, are all full of j^oint and humor. 

The object of this production was to expose the 
political venality and corruption of many of the lead- 
ins: nien that surrounded Clinton, as well as to take 
down the Governor's literary and scientific pretensions, 
which was done with telling efi^ect both in the poem 
and in the notes. 

" The Bucktail Bards " was at the time attributed 



42 

to Mr. Verplauck, tliougli it has been since supposed to 
have been the work of several hands, and the names 
of Judge John Duer, and of Rudolph Bunuer, an active 
politician and a man of vivacity and -wit, have been 
named as connected with him in the production of it. 
He was himself always very reticent upon tlie subject. 
"VVlien called upon, at the dinner given iu the Century to 
Fitz-Greene Halleck, to resjaond to a toast compliment- 
aiy to this satire, he evaded the question of the au- 
thorship, but upon another occasion impliedly ad- 
mitted his connection with it, but that was all. He 
probably felt (for he was not a man to bear animosi- 
ties) that he had accomplished, by its production at the 
time, all that he had desired, and was willing to let the 
controversy end with the causes that had produced it. 
In this year, 1819, he was elected by the anti-Clin- 
tonians, or Bucktails, to the Legislature, as a member 
from the city of New York, and continued to represent it 
in the Assembly during the years 1820, 1821, 1822, and 
1823. He took no prominent part as a speaker or as 
a debater, nor is his name mentioned in any of the 
strugsles which led to the overthro\v of the old Coun- 
cil of Ajipointment, and the adoption of a new Consti- 
tution in 1821. He was chainnan of the Committee 
upon Education, and appears to have devoted himself 
to those quiet legislative labors which produce their 



43 

effects without attractiusr tie attention wlaicli is o'iven 
to exciting political discussions in representative bod- 
ies. In fact, like Clinton himself, he never became a 
ready public speaker or debate]*. Whatever he did 
was the result of previous thought and preparation ; 
and even then, though his matter was excellent, his 
manner was unimpressive, his voice irnattractive, and 
his gestures awkward. He was fluent and easy 
enough with his pen, and, when he had before him a 
carefully-written address, he could read it before a lit- 
erary or other public body with considerable effect. 

In 1821 he was appointed a professor in the Gen- 
eral Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, 
in the city of New York, and after his retirement 
from the Legislature, in 1824, he published a volume 
" On the Natm'e and Uses of the Evidences of Re- 
vealed Religion," a work of sterling merit. Though 
the subject was one upon which several able and well- 
known works had been written, his treatment of it had 
an especial merit of its OAvn. He did not bring together, 
like Lardner, the great aiTay of historical proof, nor 
methodize it, to make the conclusions it warrants more 
apparent, like Paley ; nor reason from the analogy of 
Nature, like Butler; but he relied mainly upon the ni- 
ternal evidence which Christianity itself affords of its 
divine origin. Toward the close of the essay he 



u 



surveyed the leading features of the historical proof, 
liut the l)ody of the work Avas devoted to show- 
ing the superiority of Christianity to every otlier form 
of religious belief, in its adaptation to the wants and 
hopes of man's nature. It is impossible to read this 
Vjook without being profoundly impressed by the sin- 
cerity of the writer's convictions, and it abounds in 
passages of great force, earnestness, and beauty, of 
which the following may be cited as a specimen : 

" Prophecy announces the advent of the religion of 
Jesus ; history records its j^rogress ; literature and criti- 
cism combine to attest the muniments of its doctrines ; 
but its surest witnesses are to be found in man's own 
breast — in the grandeur of his thoughts — in the low- 
ness of his desires — in the aspirations which lift him 
toward the lieavens, in the vices which weigh him to 
the earth — in his sublime, his inexplicable conceptions 
of infinity and eternity — in his humiliating experience 
of folly, misery, and guilt. ... It unfolds to him his 
own character and situation, his duties and the means of 
discharsrine them, the moral diseases under which he 
labors, and the remedies he needs. ... It presents to 
him a high and beautiful, an unostentatious and pure 
morality, taught in weighty and impressive aphorisms; 
in natural and touching similitudes, or in the most 
engaging forms of action and character. , . . It speaks 



45 

to liim of the nature and attributes of God, and this 
not in the Avay of dry and didactic systems, but as 
those attributes are actually exhibited in the manifes- 
tations of His power and goodness. While it offers 
to man's consideration subjects to engage and employ 
the noblest powers of his reason, it addresses him also 
as a being largely endowed with sentiments and affec- 
tions, and it calls upon the warm sensibilities and 
strong emotions of his breast, moving him in turns by 
each and every rational motive of interest, duty, and 
feeling, to remorse, to feai', to repentance, to devotion, 
and to gratitude." 

This period of comparative leisure was productive 
of other fruits. His attention was attracted by the 
want of commercial morality in that period of Avild 
speculations and fluctuations in value which preceded 
the panic of 1825, and the legal rules by which con- 
tracts for the buying and selling of merchandise are 
governed, which, as he conceived, were insufficient to 
secure that integrity in trading Avhich he deemed in- 
disjiensable to a commercial people. Accordingly, in 
1825, he published a volume called an "Essay on the 
Doctrine of Contracts as affected in Law and Morals by 
Concealment, Error, or Inadequate Price." Whatever 
may be the judgment of lawyers upon the modifica- 
tions he proposed in the rules upon this branch of the 



46 

commercial law, there can be but one o})inion in re- 
spect to the legal learning displayed in the work, and 
upon the ability with which it is written. It would 
have produced at the time a marked impression, had 
its author been an eminent lawyer or judge, but, 
emanating from one unknown in the practice of the 
law, it appears to have attracted but little attention. 
It was, moreover, most unjustly assailed by the editor 
of a law journal then published in the city of New 
York, who, so far as it related to the law, spoke of it 
with the utmost contemj)t, and, as an ethical treatise, 
pronounced it of no value. He recommended those 
who had not bought it, to leave it untouched upon the 
bookseller's shelves, and those who had, to let it lie 
upon their tables Avith its leaves uncut. It may be 
doubted, from his remarks, if the writer had ever read 
it, and the whole article bears internal evidence of hav- 
ing been written by a personal or political enemy. 
The reviewer was answered by "William Sampson, a 
lawyer of some literary notoriety at the time, whose 
praise of the Avork, at least among lawyers, was prob- 
ably as detrimental as the other Avriter's abuse; for 
Sampson, in public addresses, in pamphlets, and in 
newspajier articles, had indulged for years in an indis- 
criminating denunciation of the whole system of the 
common law, a course as extreme and as unreasonable 



as the legal bigotry of those who consider it the per- 
fection of human reason, and as beyoutl the possibility 
of improvement. 

One of the leading objects of this work was to 
bring about some modification of the rule of caveat 
emjyfor, by which, in the event of any defect in the ar- 
ticle sold, the loss is upon the buyer, unless he has 
bought upon an express warranty, or the seller has 
been guilty of fraud. He urged with great force the 
unjust extent to which this rule had been carried, and 
gave many illustrations of cases in which it would be 
to the benefit of commerce, entii*ely practicable and 
certainly just, to impose the loss upon the seller; and, 
having been engaged for many years in the chief com- 
mercial city of the Union, in the discharge of duties 
involving the practical a])plication of this legal rule, I 
am enabled to say that the law is coming round to the 
recoguitiijn of some of the very distinctions insisted 
upon in this derided book ; and I may add, as the 
result of my experience, that, if a more strict and just 
rule had been applied, we should, I think, have had a 
higher standard of morality in buying and selling, 
without any diminution of our commercial prosperity 
as a people. 

During this year, 1824, he delivered a discourse at 
the annual meeting of the American Academy of the 



48 

Fine Arts, the superiority of wbicli to a much-lauded 
address of Clinton's before the same body, eight years 
previously, is very marked. I know of no production, 
within the same limits, in which the reasons Avhy a 
nation should encourage the development of the fine 
arts are so forcibly stated; that describes so felici- 
tously the beneficial influence which works of art exer- 
cise uj)ou individuals, or which points out so clearly the 
causes of the pleasure which they impart. A consider- 
able portion of this discourse was devoted to an ex- 
amination of the state of architecture in this countiy, 
and suggestions were made for its improvement, many 
of Avhich are as applicable at the present day as at the 
time when they wei'e delivered. 

In 1825 Mr. Verplanck was elected to Congress as 
a representative from the city of New York, and con- 
tinued to be a member of the House of Representatives 
for eight yeare, or until 1833. My limits will not allow 
me to review in detail his congressional career durincr 
a period which embraced the whole of John Quincy 
Adams's Administration and the first four years of Gen 
eral Jackson's. It was, as will be remembered, one of 
the most exciting periods in our political history, and 
in Avhich he was an influential actor. I may refer to 
the fact that it was through his instrumentality chiefly 
that the law of copyright was extended from twenty- 



49 

eight to forty-eiglit years, in recognition of wliicli a 
public dinner was given to him in this city. He was 
chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, then 
the most responsible as well as the most influential po- 
sition in the House. To this committee was intrusted 
the delicate subject of the tariff, which at that period 
agitated the whole country, gave rise to the political 
doctrine of nullification, and threatened the dismember- 
ment of the Union. It was a great national crisis, through 
which the country was carried in safety by the adop- 
tion of the fjimous Compromise Act of 1833, a master- 
stroke of policy, which pacified the nation, and satisfied 
both the North and the South. This compromise Mr. 
Verplanck was one of the parties in bringing about. As 
chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, he re- 
ported a bill for the diminution of duties until they 
reached the revenue standard. As the passage of this 
bill in the House was ap2:)rehended by Mr. Clay, the lead- 
er of the protectionists, action upon it at their request 
was delayed. Consultation s followed , and a compromise 
for a gradual diminution of duties over a period of more 
than tAvo presidential terms was privately agreed upon, 
a bill was prepared to that effect and introduced in the 
Senate by Mr. Clay, and discussed. Pending its discus- 
sion, the bill of the Committee of Ways and Means came 
up in the House, when the one which had been pri- 

7 



50 

vately agreed ui:>on was offered as a substitute. It was 
referred to Mr. Verplanck's committee, was reported by 
Mm the next morning, and passed the House. It was 
immediately thereafter brought to the Senate, and, hav- 
ing the united support of Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun, 
was adopted. The chief difference between it and 
the bill of Mr. Verplanck was, that his bill provided 
for an immediate reduction in part, and a final reduc- 
tion to the revenue standard in 1834 ; while the other 
provided for a gradual diminution to that standard 
until reached in the year 1842. The whole credit 
of the measure was, however, accorded to Mr. Clay, 
and little if any attention given to the fact that it 
was the bill of Mr. Verplanck, and the fact that he 
had a majority in the House in favor of it, that 
brought things to a crisis and to a settlement. He 
took no pains himself to advise the world of his 
share iu this important measure. He was throughout 
life modest iu respect to his own services or acquire- 
meuts, and appears to have been indifferent to the 
value of political or literaiy fame. 

The message of General Jackson, recommending the 
removal of the deposits from the Bank of the United 
States, was also referred to this committee. Mr. Ver- 
planck reported a resolution, declaring as the opinion 
of the House, that the deposits were safe in the custody 



51 

of tlie Lank, wliicli was adopted by a large majority. 
This bronglit liiui into open collision with General Jack- 
son, and the result was Ms separation, with many others, 
from the Democratic party, and the formation of the 
Whig party, of Avhich he Avas one of the founders. In 
the following year, 1834, he was nominated Ijy the 
Whigs for the office of Mayor of New York, in opposi- 
tion to his Democratic colleague in Congi-ess, Cornelius 
W. LaAvi'ence, which gave rise to one of the most excit- 
ing municipal contests that has ever occurred in this 
city, in which his Democratic opponent was elected by 
the small majority of one hundred and fifty-two. 

Upon retiring fi-om Congress, he devoted himself 
more especially to literary pursuits, and contributed ar- 
ticles to the Mirror, a literary journal then published in 
New York, among which was a charming memoir of 
Robert C. Sands, his literary associate, together with 
Mr. Biyant, in the production about this period of three 
volumes of a literary annual, Tlie. Talisman, which 
contains many light articles from his pen. 

Clinton died in 1828. Ta\'o years afterward, Mr. 
Verplanck delivered a discourse before the literary 
societies of Columbia College, and, forgetting what- 
ever cause he had for complaint at Clinton's conduct 
upon his trial, and his coarse personality in the sketch 
of Abimelech Coody, he availed liimself of the occa- 



0-2 

.sion of this address to offer this uoble tribute to his 
memory : 

" I ghadly pay the homage due to his eminent and 
lasting services, and honor the lofty ambition which 
taught him to look to great works of jjublic utilit}', and 
their successful execution, as his arts of gaining or of 
redeeming the confidence of a generous and pul:)lic-spir- 
ited people. Whatever of party animosity might have 
blinded me to his merits, had died away long before 
his death, and I could noAV utter his honest praises 
without the imputation of hollow pretence from 
others, or the mortifying consciousness in my own 
breast of rendering unwilling and tardy justice to 
noble designs and great public services." 

In the same year, 1830, he interested himself in 
the movement for the erection of a public monument 
to the great forensic orator and patriot, Thomas Addis 
Emmet, and waa the author of the lengthy English 
inscription which records, upon the obelisk in St. 
Paul's churchyard, the services and merits of this dis- 
tinguished man. In 1833 Mr. Verplanck published a 
collection of his own discourses, and for many years 
thereafter he continued to deliver addresses before lit- 
erary and other bodies, distinguished for the elegance 
with which they were written, and the comprehensive- 
ness and felicity with which he handled various sub- 



jects Avitliiu the wide rauge of his knowledge. Among 
them I should not pass without notice his introductory 
address to a course of scientific lectures before the 
Mechanics' Institute of the city of New York, in 1833, 
as exhibiting the facility with which he could impress 
upon the popular mind the attractiveness and value of 
scientific studies ; his discourse in the same year be- 
fore Geneva College, upon "The Right Moral Influ- 
ence and Use of Liberal Studies," -with its noble open- 
ing, in Avhich he traced the course of the mathematical 
and physical sciences from " the time when the Chal- 
dean shepherd solaced the long hours of his nightly 
watch by tracing the apparent movements of the 
heavenly bodies, and the Egyptian priest or magis- 
trate, compelled, by the yearly overflow of the Nile, 
to mark out again the places of each proprietor, was 
led to the discovery of the elementary problems and 
propositions of geometry;" and the earnestness with 
which, in this fine address, he sought to impress upon 
his young hearers the necessity and value of toleration 
in all matters of opinion, which with him was not sim- 
ply inculcating a precept, for it was illustrated by the 
example of his own life ; and his discourse in 1836, 
before Union Colleo'e, " The Advantages and Dangers 
of the American Scholar," which may still be read 
Avith interest and instruction for its admirable com- 



54 

parison of the advantages and disadvantages wliicli 
our republican institutions and forms of society ex- 
ercise upon the vocation of literary men. 

In 1838 he was elected to the State Senate, in 
which he served four years. It Avas then a body com- 
bining legislative and judicial functions, the members 
of which, in addition to forming a cooperative branch 
of the Legislature, sat also as a Court of Errors, to 
review the decisions of the Supreme Coui-t and the 
Court of Chancery. Of his legislative labors, my 
limits will allow me only to refer to his masterly 
speech upon the reform of our judicial system, a speech 
Avhich gave the death-blow to oiu* Court of Chancery. 
It exhibits how profoundly he had studied our judi- 
cial system, and that of England and of other coun- 
tries ; how fully he imderstood their defects, and how 
clearly he comprehended the improvements that could 
be made. It will suffice to say, that some of the most 
valuable changes adopted by the Constitutional Con- 
ventions of 1846 and 1868 were suggested in this 
speech ; and I may add that our system would have 
been more harmonious and perfect had they folloAved 
his sagacious advice in some other features. 

In the Court of Errors he occupied from the be- 
ginning a commanding position. In the first case that 
was argued after he became a member of the Court, 



Saltiis vs. Everett, he delivered the leading opiuion 
upon a most embarrassiug and difficult question of 
commercial law, au opiuion frequently cited with ap- 
probation liy judges, and followed iu other States and 
in England/ In the one hundred and seven cases de- 
cided while he was a member of the Court, he wrote 
opinions in seventy-one, an unusual proportion when 
the importance and difficulty of the questions are con- 
sidered that come before a court of last resort. These 
opinions, which were perspicuously and elegantly writ- 
ten, were not simply his conclusions, but elaborate 
judg-ments, founded on the closest investigations of the 
questions submitted, the most careful and exhaustive 
examination of authorities, and a practical, comprehen- 
sive, and familiar acquaintance with legal rules and 
priuciples, even those of the most technical kind. It 
was, as it might well be, a matter of astonishment that 
a man who had never sat before in a court of justice — 
who never argued or tried a cause for a client in a 
court in his life — should at once take such a position 
as this in the highest judicial tiibunal of the State, 
and hold it during the entire period that he continued 
to be a member of it. In fact, he was the controlling 
power, for, whenever the Chancellor differed from him, 
he invariably carried the Court, and the weight that 
was attached to his opinions may be inferred from the 



5B 

fact that, during tlie four years tliat lie served, it is 
only in three instances that Ms vote is found recorded 
with the judges who voted in the minority.' 

Throuo-hout his life he had been a dilio-ent student 
"of Shakespeare, and upon his quitting the Senate he 

' The opinions be delivered will be found from vols. xx. to xxvi. of 
"Wendell's Eeports ; and, that some estimate may be formed of their 
extent and value, I will briefly enumerate some of the most important, 
viz. : His learned opinion in Thompson vs. The People, upon tlie true 
nature of franchises in this country, the right to construct bridges over 
navigable streams, and the limits of the writ of quo warranto. His 
exhaustive examination of the whole structure of our State and Federal 
Govemment, in Delafield vs. The State of Indiana, upon the question 
whether a citizen of this State could inaintaifi an action against one of 
the States of the Union. His admirable exposition of the reasons upon 
which the doctrine of prescription, or rights established by custom and 
long usage, is founded, in Post vs. Pearsall. On the interpretation of 
technical legal terras, in Lovett vs. Pell. His admirable survey of the 
whole law of marine insurance, and of the principles upon which it 
rests, in the American Insurance Company vs. Bryan. The right which 
the owners of the adjoining soil have in the beds of rivers, involving a 
lengthy examination of the law of navigable rivers and fresh-water 
streams, in HemjishaWs case ; a most masterly opinion, in which the 
whole Court concurred. His opinion in Smith vs. Acker, in which he 
carried the Court against the Chancellor, and overturned all the pre- 
vious decisions of the Supreme Court, on the right of a jury, upon an 
uncontradicted state of facts, to decide whether there was or not a 
fraudulent intent in a mortgage of personal property, the Supreme 
Court having uniformly held that the question of fraudulent intent, 



57 

undertook, at tlie request of tlie Messrs. Harper, to 
edit a new edition of the poet's works. To this task 
he applied himself with great assiduity and devoted 
to it three years. It was completed in 1847, in. three 

upon an undisputed state of facts, was a question of law for the judge 
and not for tlie jury. His controUiug opinion in the great case of 
Alice Lispenard, upon the amount of mental capacity necessary to make 
a will, affecting an immense amount of property in the cit}^ of New 
York. Upon the law of personal trusts, in Darling vs. Rogers. Of 
joint banking corporations, in Warner vs. Beers; of partnership, in 
Vernon vs. The Manhattan Company. On the right of a^ advocate to 
maintain an action for his fees, in Stephens vs. Adams. Upon the law 
of the delegation of trusts, in Lyon vs. Jerome. Upon the fraudulent 
hypothecation of vessels and the obligation of bottomry bonds, in Cole 
\%.White, an opinion of great leng"th and of great ability. His opinion 
maintaining the power of the Chancellor to compel the payment of 
taxes where there is no adequate remedy at law, in Burant vs. The 
Supervisors of Albany. Upon the law of fire insurance, in The Mayor 
of New York vs. Pentz. The law of libel, in Ryckman vs. Delavan. 
Upon erasures in deeds and instruments under seal, in Broivn vs. Kim- 
hal. His exposition of the whole law of lien, in Faile vs. White, and 
his opinion upon the liability of a city to pay for a building which 
was blown up by order of the authorities to stop a conflagration, in 
Stone vs. The Mayor of New York. In Hoe vs. Acker, the Court of 
Errors afterward qualified their previous decision ; and, in the great 
case of Alice Lispenard, the correctness of Mr. Verplanck's conclusion 
has been doubted. With these two exceptions, however, so far as I 
know, the soundness of his numerous opinions has never been ques- 
tioned. 



38 

large volumes, and ^vas from its literary merit, its pic- 
torial emtellisliments, and the perfection of its typo- 
grapliical execution, tlie best edition of Shakespeare 
that had appeared in this country. Its chief value as 
an edition lies in the care Mr. Verplanck bestowed 
upon the text ; in the light thrown by his notes upon 
many obscure passages, which he Avas enabled to do 
from his extensive readino; and his thorough knowl- 
edge of the political and legal history of England, 
and in a judicious selection, fi'om the whole range 
of Shakespearian literature, of such critical observa- 
tion as would lead to a better understanding of the 
plays, a clearer conception of the characters, and a 
fuller ap2")reciation of the poet's genius. No one, un- 
less he is very familiar with the subject, would get 
from the work itself a knowledge of the precise ex- 
tent or value of Mr. Verplanck's labors, for his own 
observations, he says, are sometimes incorporated with 
the remarks of others, and sometimes given in separate 
notes ; modestly observing that he had not felt enough 
of the pride of authorship to designate any thing of 
his own by his name or any peculiar maik. He did 
little in the way of conjectural emendation. If, he 
says, in one of his notes, the safe rule of endeavor- 
ing to understand the original text, instead of guess- 
ing what the author ought to have written, had been 



59 

adopted, we should have been saved volumes of com- 
mentary, and it is his judicious adherence to this 
rule that renders the edition, in my judgment, so valu- 
able. He remodelled Collier's life of the poet, and 
wrote an introduction to each play, in which, in addi- 
tion to many admirable observations upon the separate 
plays, he bestowed much study and thought to detei-- 
mine the time or periods in which they were suc- 
cessively produced, his object being to trace the prog- 
ress of Shakespeare's taste and experience ; or, to use 
his own language, " to follow out, through each suc- 
cessive change, the luxuriant growth of his poetic 
faculty and comic power, and the still nobler expan- 
sion of the moral wisdom, the majestic contemplation, 
the terrible energ}^, the matchless fusion of the impas- 
sioned with the philosophical, that distingaiished the 
matured mind of the author of Hamlet, Lear, and Mac- 
beth." It is much to be regretted that the plates of 
this excellent edition were shortly afterward destroyed 
by fire. Being a very costly work, it was not repro- 
duced, and it consequently never became as exten- 
sively known as it deserved to be. 

It now remains but to enumei'ate what he did, in 
his capacity as a private citizen, for public objects. He 
was for more than fifty years a trustee of the Society Li- 
brary ; for foi-ty-foui' years a regent of the University of 



60 

tlie State of New York, requiring liis personal attend- 
ance twice a year at its sessions in Albany ; for twenty- 
six years lie was a member of the vestry of Trinity 
Chnrcli, and was at his death one of the two church-Mar- 
dens, a position involving the care and management of 
the enormous property of that great religious corpora- 
tion; for twenty-four years he was president of the 
Board of Emigration, a public trust of the most im- 
portant and onerous character, to which he attended 
Avith the most scrupulous fidelity up to last week 
of his life ; for many years he was a governor of the 
New York Hospital, and a director of the New York 
Life Insurance Company ; and was one of the managers 
of the Manhattan Club, and the first vice-president of the 
New York Historical Society. All of these positions 
he held at the time of his death ; to which it must be 
added that he had been for many years a trustee of 
the Public School Society, an institution no longer in 
existence ; a trustee for several years of Columbia 
College, and had lieen vice-president of the American 
Academy of Fine Arts, the institution which preceded 
and gave rise to the preseiit National Academy of 
Desian. He was at first the usual chairman, and after 
its charter the president, of the Century Club for 
seventeen years. His connection with these institu- 
tions was not like that of many who merely give the 



61 

countenance of their names, but he attended to their 
affairs with the exactness, punctuality, and method ot 
a mei'chant. 

He did little, if any thing, during his long life, to 
aid jniblic objects by pecuniary assistance. I have 
never seen or heai'd of his name attached to a volun- 
tary subscription for such a purpose. It -was a great 
defect in a man so accomplished and otherwise so pub- 
lic-sjjirited, and was the more marked in a city where 
pecuniary liberality, for public objects, is a distinguish- 
ing characteristic of its citizens. Clinton charged him 
with avarice. This was scarcely just, for he was not 
a man who had made the accumulation of money 
or property a leading object of life. He was con- 
tent with the fortune he had inherited, which was sup- 
posed, during his life, to be large, but which after his 
death appears to have been much exaggerated. He may 
have been ])arsimonious ; but he was not avaricious, 
nor in any way mercenarj^, for he gave his time and 
his intellect for years, as has been shown, to public 
institutions, and public labors, frequently of an exact- 
insr nature, where he nefther received nor sought for 
compensation. 

Finally, when it is considered that he was for years 
an efficient manager of institutions, eleemosynary, finan- 
cial, educational, municipal, and religious ; that he had 



6-2 

been an active politician, a legislator, and a statesman ; 
that he was an eminent jurist, an able theologian, an 
acute literary critic, a satirical poet, an exquisite prose 
Avriter, and a scholar of vast and varied attainments, 
it -will be felt that I have not overestimated in saying 
that he Avas the most distimruished of the descendants 
of the founders of New York. The appreciation of 
his talents and services, the consciousness that a great 
citizen had departed, were shown in the character of 
the men who filled Trinity Church upon the day of 
his funeral, and this voluntary tribute of resj)ect, at 
the busy hour of noon, in this busy metro jjolis, was 
a demonstrative and public proof of the estimate 
formed in his native city of his life and character. 



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